The New International Encyclopædia/Aino, or Ainu

AINO, ī′nō̇, or AINU, ī′no͞o (men of Aiona, their reputed ancestor, or possibly a corruption of inu, dog, contemptuously applied to them by the Japanese). An aboriginal people, now numbering some 18,000 souls, in northern and eastern Yezo, the southern part of Saghalien, and the southern Kuriles (all but 1500 live on Yezo). They inhabited once a great part, if not all, of the Japanese Archipelago, and were the first race to dwell there, unless the so-called "pit-dwellers" of Yezo and Saghalien were, as Hitchcock (1890) suggested, driven out by them when they intruded into this area from their former home on the adjoining Asiatic coast many centuries B.C., as the archærological remains (shell heaps, stone implements, pottery, etc.) in Japan indicate. The retreat northward of the Aino is noted in Japanese chronicles referring to the "barbarians." The physical characteristics of the Aino—short stature, flattened humerus and tibia, heavy beards, and general hirsuteness (much exaggerated by travelers), lighter skin, dolichocephaly and brachycephaly, somewhat regular features, and non-savage looks—have given rise to theories of relationship with almost every known race. Drinton (1890) allies them with the Giliaks of the Amur; Deniker (1900) considers them sui generis; Keane (1896) and Baelz (1901) believe them to have been originally of the Caucasian (white) race. The last, who has studied the Aino at first hand, is of the opinion that they are the extreme eastern branch of a race related to the Caucasian stock, once occupying much of Northeastern Asia, but split into two sections by the inroads of the Mongol-Turkish peoples at a very remote date, a view which has a good deal to commend it. But the Aino are not a uniformly pure type, as the differences between those of Yezo and of Saghalien show. The linguistic, geographical, and mythological researches of B. H. Chamberlain (1887) and Bachelor (1882-1894) prove both the uniqueness of the Aino tongie and the great influence upon Japanese life exerted by that people in times past. Driven northward from their ancient habitat in southwestern and central Japan, they have left their names on the natural features of the archipelago. Their language is simple and harmonious and resembles the Japanese in structure, but is quite distinct in vocabulary. It has been reduced to writing only recently. The Rev. John Bachelor has compiled an Aino grammar and dictionary, and translated the New Testament into the tongue. The Aino religion, originally a rather primitive nature-worship, with the cult of the bear especially prominent, and their folk-tales, have evidently received some additions from Japanese sources in historical times. In the last few years some of the Tsuishikari Aino have become Buddhists of the Monto sect, and a few others in the region of Piratori have become Protestants. A good account of the Aino (with bibliography) was published by Professor Hitchcock in the Report of the United States National Museum for 1890. Since then the most important literature about them is to be found in the anthropological studies of Koganei (lS93-'94) and Landor's Alone with the Hairy Ainu (1893). Baelz, in the Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie for 1901, considers that the amount of Aino blood in the Japanese outside of Yezo has been much underestimated. He notes also the increasing intermixture of Japanese and Aino, and foresees the ultimate disappearance of the latter, not by extinction, but by natural amalgamation with the former. This amalgamation is favored by the gradual abandonment of ideas about their alleged mental inferiority. (See Japan, paragraph Ethnology.) In addition to the works cited in the text, consult: Gritlis, The Mikado's Empire (New York, 1876); Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (London, 1885); Chamberlain and Bachelor, Aino Studies (Tokio, 1887); Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan (Yokohama, 1374-98).